This invention concerns the removal of DC from a digitally encoded signal comprising a plurality of multi level data symbols. The data symbols are formatted in repetitive data fields having a repetition rate F.sub.S, each organized into a plurality of repetitive data segments, each of which includes a data segment sync signal. The digitally encoded signal is transmitted in analog form and, in the preferred embodiment, includes a DC offset that represents a pilot. The pilot is recovered in the receiver and used to synchronize and lock up the received signal. The DC offset is removed before the signal is applied to an analog to digital (A/D) converter, which optimizes the use of the A/D converter. The converted signal is supplied to digital processing circuitry where the signal is sliced to recover the symbol levels. The recovered symbols are arranged in digital bytes, deinterleaved to undo the error protection and interleaving performed at the transmitter, applied to a Reed Solomon decoder for error correction to achieve the correct symbols. These symbols are used to develop the video, audio and auxiliary data.
The method and apparatus of the invention removes any residual DC that finds its way into the signal due to the digital processing components and the integrated circuit format. In the digital domain, even small residual DC components can be very detrimental.